grant57 wrote:Wow Tim
Hugely impressive, well done
The pit for the bike lift is genius
Would love to chat about your roof sometime as my garage has crappy flat wobbly tin things (that leak!)
I wonder if I could upgrade my roof to similar
Grant
Thanks Grant. Its coming along nicely now, just finished wiring it up. 9 metal double sockets fitted , including one with twin USB sockets. After much searching about ended up huying and fitting 2 , 4ft LED batten/strip lights at 43 quid a pop. The difference compared to my old fluorescent tubes is phenomenal.....well, its fekkin great anyrode.
Had already run service cables from the house at the start of this exercise....mains armoured, alarm x2, CcTV cable, telephone cable, aerial cable and ethernet cable for round the clock uninterrupted porn
. Yesterday I bought and fitted a WAP ( wireless access point), so the ethernet cable brings my internet from the house to the WAP box where it is sent wirelessly to my phone or tablet ( which dont have ethernet plug sockets). That cost 28 quid from BT online shop. Works a treat.
Daughter has allowed me to access her Spotify full account so Ive got as much music as I could ever need, coupled with it all being connected up to an old but decent Technics amp and a pair of Mordaunt Short speakers I am in heaven.
Today, I am building shelving and storage space.
Final 2 jobs before I hand it over to the Motorcycle Department
is to insulate between the rafters with Kingspan/Celotex and last but not least, level my new concrete floor. It has two low spots and a poor finish. This was all a result of lack of experience working with concrete in volume.
Please indulge me.
I think the volume calculated was about 4 or 5 cubic metres of concrete. Mixing concrete with an electric mixer, for underpinning foundations I soon realised ( along with doing some sums) that anything other than having it delivered ready mixed was a fekkin big no-no. Impractical and uneconomic in every sense of the words.
Right, getting it delivered, no problem. But how to get it up the 40 mtr drive? Hmmmmm, barrow it?
...fekk me it'd take hundreds of barrowloads and would fekkin kil me. Had a word with a mate up the road that runs a garage....."yea, I gotta dumper truck....yea Ill drop it off next week, keep as long as you want....no charge"
Result. Week later dumper truck dropped off, had a few test runs and nowt to it. Ordered concrete and mixer arrived early Saturday morning.
Garage base all ready and prepped, "crusher run" base whacked down, DPM sheet down, bike lift pit former dropped in, steel mesh with spacers laid. All ready and waiting.
Two of us to do it...me and my 25 year old son.
Off we started.....first dumperload tipped in, son on shovel spreading it back. Things tootling along nicely until about 30 minutes when son not getting shut of mound quick enough. I jumped off and gave him a hand and off we went again.couple more times and son getting fekked and Im getting stuck in fekkin concrete
The concrete was going off too quickly and unbeknown to me at the time I shoulda told the Readymix man to fekk right off with what was left.
By now, I was panicking, phoned a mate and after pleading insanity he turned up to help.
Nevertheless we were struggling.
Asked the mixer driver how much was left and he replied about 3 more dumper loads after this one. Phew!
Half way up drive the fekkin twatting shitty bastid dumper coughed, spluttered, groaned and died the death...complete with full, setting load.
OMFekkinG. Dashed to local garage and managed to wrestle and drag the Polish mechanic doing a foreigner to come down and sort the dumper before the bucket had set.
By now, I was tearful, angry, laffing hysterically and just wanted to go to the pub....but first I had to dig ourselves out of the shit.
We just arrived back in time to see my 72 year old next door neighbour, falling off the top of the dumper into our adjoining laurel hedge with just his fekkin legs sticking out.
...the silly old twat had started to help my son to try and break up the settting concrete in the bucket with a pick and bar in case the dumper failed to start!
Oh thats all I fekkin needed, an OAP'sdeath on my hands.....and at this time of all times...
Fortunately once I pulled him out of the hedge we could see he wasnt hurt so carried on barrowing whilst the Polish mechanic tried to sort out the dumper. It eventually fired up but it was only temporary....summink up with a broken bleed valve. Managed to keep it running whilst bucket very slowly tippped up and enough concrete dug out earlier to stop it upending itself. We then had to split the labour , to break up and remove setting concrete and also to barrow the remainder from the mixer.
How the fook I did not have a heart attack AND a nervous breakdown I will never know.
We eventually got it all laid, but by that time the Bull float I'd hired to get a perfect finish, was neither use nor ornament.
When it was all finished we then had to break up the dollop on the drive whist it was still breakable and likewise to the half a metre left over and setting nicely outside the garage on a sheet of DPM.
By this time, 8 hours had passed and I was a gibbering wreck.
A hard way to learn that sometimes you just have to put ya hands in ya pocket and leave it to someone that knows what they're fekkin doing eh.